Conventional thinking suggests that levels of shared care need to be reduced in the face of high conflict post separation parenting to favour a single residential parent.
This is based upon a premise that children are more sensitive to high conflict between their parents that forces them to choose between them than they are to the loss of a loving parent.
Parental alienation theory and practice has the potential to invalidate such assumptions.
Research into Parental Alienation (Baker, Amy.J, Warshak. R.) shows that the loss of a loving parent from a child’s life is very harmful indeed, causing increased incidences of mood disorders, relationship difficulties, self-harm, self-destructive behaviours, drug and alcohol addiction. This list of emotional injuries to alienated children is remarkably similar to other forms of child abuse.
Yet, family law, its practitioners and consultants often make parenting orders that enable alienation to entrench by accepting without question the premise that it is better to eliminate a loved parent, usually the alienated or excluded parent than to perpetuate high conflict.
There is enough research (Baker, Amy. J., Warshak. R.) that supports the view that children are also emotionally injured by parental conflict. The challenge lies in creating an environment in which the risk of a child being exposed to both conflict and alienation is minimised.
So why not increase shared care to 50% in an environment of escalating parental conflict and parental alienation?
Equal shared care could mitigate conflict and the effects of alienation. With increased share care children are spared frequent high stress changeovers (especially mid week dinners) and are able to have uninterrupted, extended time with each parent without the spectre of conflict.
Parents often report that after a few hours, certainly no more than 24 hours, children relax into the loving environment of the parent with whom they are resident. They quickly forget about the other parent untilabout 24 hours before they are due to go back to them.
This seems to be the case unless children are harassed by endless telephone calls from the non-resident parents.
Parents also report that they are more able to engage their children without the constant threat of conflict with the other parent, and the consequent need for defensive parenting.
Alienating parents need time, space and uninterrupted contact with their children in order to alienate them. This makes isolation, keeping children away from the other parent, and disruption, keeping in controlling contact when the children are with the other parent, their key mechanisms.
Equal shared care has the potential to disrupt the alienation process. Children spend more uninterrupted time with the alienated parent and therefore resolve the dissonance between their loving experience of their alienated parent and what they are required to feel about them when they are with the alienating parent.
No wonder alienating parents may bitterly oppose shared care for exactly the opposite reasons! Equal shared care sends them a powerful signal that their actions will have the opposite effect to what they intended.
As always, the devil lies in the detail.
Similar Posts:
- Should Alienated Parents Abduct Their Alienated Children?
- Alienated Children Ordered Into Juvenile Care: An Australian Perspective
- Should I Tell My Alienated Children about Parental Alienation?
- Alienated Children: The ‘Humpty Dumpty’ Factor
- Parental Alienation Australia and New Zealand (PAANZ) Launches Website
Equal shared parenting by default removes a large amount of power from the alienating parent, reducing their power to control and abuse the time with the other parent. And yes, its everything that they fear, loss of power and control.
Who wins? The children.
Unfortunately there is a lot of money to be made because of the conflict of alienation. Thats the biggest challenge.
The other winner would be the judges, whether they like it or not, would have a lighter case load because they wouldnt be in front of so many desperate parents fighting for their childrens right to have both parents in their life, day in day out….
You have made some good points here. Shared parenting can have a counter intuitive effect of depriving power from the alienating parent.Yet at the same time that alienating parents feel a a kind of terror when they are separated from their children, shared care also gives them a degree of ‘managed’ power and control.
At times ‘family law’ appears to be an oxymoron. The idea of applying the law to families (and applying families to the law) contradicts the essence of a family as the subversive element of society not subject to social control. Those of us who have been through our family law system could be forgiven for believing it is simply a wealth transfer system.
Yes, imagine the family law scenario where shared care is automatically presumed. Is that not where we started?
There are encouraging moves afoot in the USA in some states to make equal shared parenting the default. It would be great for the children to have the same in Australia. Now thats worth fighting for!
Unfortunately in Australia, very young children ( under 2/3 years old), get done by the McIntosh affect – old research that determined that they are somehow damaged by overnight stays with the alienated parent- (a recent and very credible study refutes this and indeed encourages early overnight stays – Social Science and Parenting Plans for Young Children: A consensus report- Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/national/empty-days-lonely-nights-20140428-37e3e.html#ixzz36BZbwXAc )
Once the precedent of no overnight and lack of significant time is set, its very difficult for the alienated parent to claw back time for the children through the court system (or through mediation), as its seen as damaging to increase the time with the alienated parent too quickly. Which empowers the alienator. And the kids lose out.
Shared care should be automatically assumed, for the same reasons i detailed in my last post. Getting it through the system is the challenge, and making it law the goal.
Hi Rob
I believe that the original presumption of shared care in Australian Family Law under the Howard Liberal-National Government was effectively diluted by legislative changes in 2008 that made child safety a paramount consideration in Family Law. Whilst shared care is still a presumption it has also become a presumption that there cannot be shared care with conflicting parents. I have suggested in a previous article that this presumption needs to be overturned and that shared care actually mitigates conflict.
I do think that Macintosh, J and others meant well in their research. However, so much research is biased by the underlying assumptions of the thesis the research is designed to prove. One such assumption comes from Bowlby’s attachment theory. This was revolutionary in its day but has been misinterpreted to mean that young children in particular form a singular attachment with one person, usually the mother. We know that in the 21st century where male and female roles are more fluid that this not the case and that there is other research (Warshak. R et al) that supports the view that very young ages both can and need to form multiple attachments with their mothers and fathers.
Unfortunately, Family Law is fundamentally conservative. I suggest that it lags behind maybe 10 years or more the accelerating social changes with which we are grappling.
However, the real threat is the growing presumption that men and fathers are ‘dangerous’ and that an unsubstantiated allegation against a man and a father must be true by virtue of their gender. This is then used by alienating parents to overturn the presumption of shared care. Rolf Harris and Robert Hughes have simply consolidated this view.